Saturday, October 11, 2014

An Open Letter to Melissa Rivers

Dear Melissa,

It’s been over a month since your mom passed away,
and I still miss her. I miss watching celebrity guests appear on Fashion Police, the same ones Joan had
just mercilessly teased a week earlier,now
sitting next to her trying to catch their breath from laughing so hard. I miss
watching guests coming out of her closet on In
Bed with Joan, getting cozy and sharing life stories on her floral
comforter. Most of all, I miss watching the two of you bickering and mocking
one another, supporting each other and just plain driving each other crazy, on Joan and Melissa: Joan Knows Best. Her fierce loyalty and devotion to you and
your son was apparent in every scene. And watching your mom drive you crazy
felt like home to me.

We’ve never met, but you and your mom have served as
inspirations to me. Your mom never minced words about the painful things she
had been through in her lifetime. But she survived. And she not only survived, she
lived. Through it all, she was unfalteringly
unapologetic, honest and real.

About one year ago, I lost my mom suddenly too. My mom
was a little like your mom. She never appeared on Carson, never hosted her own
show, and never even had the opportunity to get into bed with Ray J. But like
your mom, she used humor to battle the difficult times in her life. My mom’s
greatest life lesson to me was to laugh in the face of pain. She wasn’t always
great at following her own advice, but she always got me to laugh at my own
mishegas. And I think that at the core of your mom’s humor, and what made
everyone love her so damn much, was that she made fun of herself more than
anyone else. As Joan once said, “Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after
all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century”.

When you lose a parent, you want the whole world to
stop and acknowledge it. And when Joan Rivers passed away, it felt like the
whole world did stop for a moment. Your mom was a comedic treasure. A groundbreaking
legend. But she was also a walking reminder to everyone who has gone through
unrelenting hardships that you need to just keep going. For your family, your
friends, your colleagues. For yourself.

Melissa, you are also an inspiration. I loved seeing
you on television a couple of weeks ago honoring your mother on Fashion Police. Before I lost my own
mom, I probably would have assumed that everyone needs to stay in bed crying
for months, waiting for time to heal them and then finally face the world once
more. But that’s not really how it works, is it? There is no timetable for when
you will finally heal from your grief. The scary truth that I must accept is
that I probably never will. I think your mom would agree and that’s why she
lived her life to the fullest and simply laughed alongside the pain. Laughed at the pain. As your mom said, “I think
anyone who’s perfectly happy isn’t particularly funny.”

Grief is a tricky thing to manage. For me, almost a
year after losing my mom, it is always there, lurking behind every moment of
every day. But something I learned from your mom is that pain and laughter can
co-exist. It’s ok to laugh. No apologies.